What a game! (Not). 15 years ago I posted these compliments about the game....

Here's my "balanced" review of ESB


I got one of these a long ways back, cleaned it up and got it running.
Nice playfield. Fact is, I have never seen one with a *bad* playfield -
probably because no-one either wanted to play them OR because they were
never running long enough to get any wear.

Used really cheap brown chip sockets that *must* be replaced, and the
GI demand on the board meant that they left the factory with a soldered
on mod to the back of the board otherwise the connectors burnt like a
Bryan Kelly restoration.  ;)

To look at - magnificent backglass, the Darth Vader motif of itself
makes it a museum piece, and the playfield art does capture the feel of
Episode V very well indeed. To play - about as poor as they come. Some
shots (like the shooter lane re-entry) are not achievable by skill,
only by chance. In the centre are two rows of three round stand up
targets - they are far too close and get destroyed regularly. The upper
flippers are there to add a gimmick - they simply serve no real purpose
except to help destroy those round stand ups. The one I bought had had
the uppers removed, which I carefully restored back to original only to
work out the reason three stand ups later!

If you want an oddity you don't necessarily want to play, but that
no-one else will have, go for it. Me, I'd take that $1500 odd and get
and do up a BH - similar wide body (but much longer and with useful
flippers) and identical "infinity effect" backglass lighting, but game
play that makes the machine worthwhile (and frankly, you'll have less
trouble maintaining a Gottlieb than this Aussie PoS).



And another when someone asked for comments on the biggest disparity between movie and pin -

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back
Movie:  The Empire Strikes Back

Before I move on to my carefully thought out post (in observance of Mr
Swanston's edict), let me start with some indisputable number
comparisons:

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number Produced - 350

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Times I played it before
Hating it - much less than 350

Movie:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Times I've Seen it over
the years - Probably more than 350 (well, maybe not, but don't let the
facts stand in the way of a good sounding statistic)

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Days I had it before Selling
it - much less than 350

Movie:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Millions of $ Taken in
First Weekend of Release - Probably more than 350 (well, maybe not,
but again,  don't let the facts........)

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - What's it Worth to Anyone But a SW Die
Hard - much less than $350

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Errors in Circuit Board
Design -  350 more than a System 80

Movie:  The Empire Strikes Back - Number of Time I've Seen it over the
years - Probably more than 350

Pin:  The Empire Strikes Back - Minimum Safe Distance -  350 inches -
beautiful to look at, just don't get close enough to be tempted to
press the start button.

I bought this pin as my first foray into repairing a non-working
machine. Well, it sure provided more to learn than an electronics
engineering degree could have tried to teach me. The day I had it
faultless (well, electronics-wise, nothing was going to change the
playfield design flaws) I had it on Ebay and out the door!

Rumored to have been made without license and hence the low production
run, the designer and owner of the business David Hankin was very
clear they had the license. Perhaps the worst executed license this
franchise has ever granted. I hope the $700.00 Lucas Arts received
from the $20.00 per unit paid bought George at least a couple of good
bottles of red to wash away the memory of that bad decision.

What's so bad about the game? Well aside from using some of the worst
available electronic components, pretty much everything else. I recall
looking at how I was going to repair the connector area on the driver
board - there were half a dozen output wires for some of the effect
lighting soldered directly to the back of the board to by-pass the
connector block. Speaking to a local self-proclaimed expert I
discovered that this was a **factory mod** (!!) to avoid the
connector block frying out in the first week..... Gives you an idea
about the design quality and engineering that went into this....

And that playfield - OK, artwork was beautiful (if you are a SW nut
especially). But lay out - two shots were just not makeable except by
accident, and in the center are two banks of targets in front of the
pop bumpers that are so close they get trashed in days, and send the
ball back to one of the four flippers ready to smash them again. Why
it had four flippers (One set above the other) is a complete mystery -
that upper set is just useless.

Insert fitting left the playfield playing like it had more craters
than the best SW asteroid.

You can find lots of these still around Aussieland, with playfields in
perfect, unused condition. That's because when they were working no-
one bothered after the first coin, and the other 80% of the time they
weren't working so ball wear didn't get an opportunity to occur.

And finally, my advice to a US collector seeking opinions on one -


if you manage to find one of these rare machines...
.
.
.
.
RUN!!!! As fast as your legs will take you ****in the other direction!
*****

I owned one for a while.  "Owned" - past tense. The happiest moment of
my pinball life was waving goodbye to it.

If you're a Star Wars buff, well that's different, a curious piece of
history, and the fact that it's the only machine that actually came
out during the original trilogy, I did find that it had genuine
nostalgia surrounding it, and it did remind me of those fun days of
the first movies.

There's about one a week on Aussie ebay. Not bad when there were only
350 of them! So if you want one, pretty easy to get one from here (but
with the dollar value, not good at the moment, although that dollar is
making parts for us Aussies super cheap).

But if you love playing, you will not love this. The main problems -
way too slow and the shots are poorly laid out. There are six targets
directly in front of the flippers in the middle of the playfield. Way
too close, get destroyed right away, and cause the only fast part of
this game to occur - the direct return of the ball to the flippers if
you're lucky, but usually SDTM (and usually accompanied by small
pieces of former target). There is a shot to the right to return to
the inlane that cannot be made with skill, just luck (ie a crap shot
bouncing off something - usually a small piece of former target
plastic.... :)


As you can see, I have been flying the Aussie Made Pinball Flag highly!